Mobile advertising - South Africa remains on top

South Africa is one country which is light years ahead of other countries when it comes to mobile advertising. It is considered the hottest market right now and the numbers speak for themselves. The average response rate for mobile advertising campaigns in South Africa is anywhere from 10% to 25%, which is nothing short of amazing.

The latest success story, MXit, proves it once again. MXit is a mobile social networking site which is as popular as Facebook in South Africa. With a subscriber base of over 7 million, the company is a dream for mobile advertisers. A huge number of mobile advertisers are interested in working with MXit as the response rates are really high.

This is not just a one-off story. Mobile phone is considered the hottest advertising medium in South Africa today and it is predicted that mobile advertising will be worth way over R1.5 billion in the next three years.

In case you’re wondering how it’s possible, let me explain.

1. Mobile advertising is cost effective. It’s way cheaper than traditional advertising methods like TV, magazines, or radio. And it delivers tremendous results.

2. You can create a mobile advertising campaign and launch it within a week’s time. And you can see the results in a day or two. This is simply unimaginable in the case of traditional advertising.

3. Most importantly, South African mobile users are prolific when it comes to mobile web. A majority of mobile users use mobile internet very regularly and this helps mobile advertisers create interactive mobile advertising campaigns to reach out to them.

Already, South African students have mobile advertising as part of their syllabus, in case you don’t know. It can only mean one thing and that is the next generation will be even more receptive to mobile advertising. Interesting, don’t you think?

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising.

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And the number of mobile social networks keeps on growing

If you thought social networking was a huge phenomenon, wait till you see the next generation of social networking – mobile social networking. Social networking has gone mobile big time and a healthy number of mobile users regularly visit social networking sites from their mobile phone.

Social networking giants like MySpace, Facebook, and Friendster have realized the enormous potential of mobile social networking and have released the mobile versions of their sites. However, the story doesn’t end there. In fact, it just begins there. Plenty of companies have started mobile social networks which have become tremendously popular with people.

First it started off as a new phenomenon and when mobile users showed great interest in them, mobile social networking sites became hugely popular. As a result, we now have a big list of mobile social networking sites and most importantly, the list keeps on growing. Check out a detailed list of mobile social networks here.

Categories: Mobile Social Networking.

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Vodafone acquires mobile social networking company ZYB

A not-so-popular Danish company called ZYB has been in the news for the past few days and a lot of websites are talking about this company fervently. Just what is this ZYB and what has it done to garner such an attention? Simple. It got acquired by Vodafone for approximately $50 million.

Here’s a little something on ZYB. It stated off as a backup service for mobile phones in 2006. The service, which is still available free of cost, allows you to save your mobile phone contacts and other information in ZYB’s servers. In the event of losing your mobile phone or losing the data in your mobile phone, this can be really helpful.

Now, back in 2008, the company has made an important change in the service and has turned it into a mobile social network. Now, you can have a separate profile page in this social network, just like you have one in Facebook, MySpace, and Orkut. You can add photos, add friends, send comments, and build your network easily.

Vodafone, by acquiring ZYB, has shown everyone which way the market is going and I’m sure we can see plenty of big players go the same way soon.

The concept of social networking on mobile phones, or mobile social networking, has been catching up with people big time and a lot of companies have realized its imminent potential. The result – you have plenty of strategic partnerships. I’ve already blogged about mobile social networking and how it can become the next big thing and incidents like this just reaffirm my faith time and again.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, All things mobile phones, Mobile Social Networking.

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Virgin Mobile’s Facebook application to woo mobile users

They say you can’t put a price on friendship. But Virgin Mobile has just done that. According to their latest offer, your friends can help you earn free mobile airtime.

Virgin Mobile has designed a Facebook application called Fund My Phone, which is nothing but an improved, online version of Sugar Mama. The only difference is, in Sugar Mama you get free airtime if you watch ads whereas in Fund My Phone, you get free airtime even if your friends watch ads.

All you need to do is, add the ‘Fund My Phone’ application to your Facebook profile and ask your friends to take a look at it. For every minute they spend watching stuff, you get free airtime.

Virgin Mobile has called this a ‘natural next step’ in connecting to their customers. It believes that the strong interaction between Facebook members will help its application reach plenty of new users easily. The good response that Sugar Mama got is also considered a reason for this step by many in the industry.

I’d have to say this is a good idea, though I’m not sure if I can convince my friends to watch ads on my Facebook profile. However, we could make an arrangement. I watch ads on someone else’s profile and someone else, preferably a friend of mine, watches ads on my profile. And we both get free airtime. Is it a bad idea? What do you say?

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, All things mobile phones.

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Mobile social networking rapidly gaining popularity

Social networking is the in-thing now and it’s evident from the number of people who access MySpace and Facebook dutifully every day. In fact, people are so much into these sites that they want to be connected all the time. However, you can’t carry a laptop all the time and you can’t go to a browsing center ten times a day to update your status in your Facebook profile and to catch up with your friends. So, what do you do? Simple – you access these sites in your mobile phone.

The practice of accessing social networking sites on mobile phones, called mobile social networking, is becoming more and more popular with mobile users these days. The biggest reason is the iPhone. It literally changed the way people perceived mobile phones and now iPhone users top the chart in mobile internet usage.

According to statistics, more than 85% of iPhone users access the internet from their phones. This is an incredible number, to say the least. Smart phone users come second in this list. People, especially young ones, who have internet facility in their phone, access social networking sites regularly.

A report from Nielson says that 1.7% of all mobile users in the U.K. visited social networking sites on their cell phones regularly. It’s 1.6% in the U.S., 0.8% in Spain, 0.6% in Italy, and 0.2% in Germany. Experts predict that these numbers will more than double in about two years and mobile social networking will become popular big time.

MySpace, followed by Facebook, is the most accessed social networking site on mobile phones. In December 2007 alone, the site had close to 3 million visits from mobile users. In the U.S. and all over Europe, there are tens of thousands of regular mobile users who log into MySpace regularly. We’ve already seen how popular MySpace can be, but still these numbers are incredible.

I think these numbers will have a significant impact on mobile service prices in the coming days. Thanks to this overwhelming popularity of mobile social networking and other similar things, operators might be tempted to cut down the rates for data plans. One example for this would be Vodafone UK. In its latest monthly plans, it has added unlimited internet access as a standard feature. We might as well see other companies follow suit.

Categories: Apple iPhone, All things mobile phones, Mobile Social Networking.

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